Tuberville Slams Activist Doctor, NIH For Hiding Negative Effects of Puberty Blockers

Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville is calling on the National Institutes of Health to explain why one of its researchers intentionally withheld data on the negative effects of puberty blockers on American children.

Last month, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy revealed to The New York Times that she purposefully stopped the publication of a $10 million taxpayer-funded study into puberty blockers and their effects on American children. Olson-Kennedy had hoped the study would show that puberty blockers improve children’s mental health, and her study found no evidence that this was the case.

“I do not want our work to be weaponized,” said Olson-Kennedy, who was sued just last week by a teenage detransitioner. “It has to be exactly on point, clear and concise. And that takes time.”

Tuberville, along with Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), called on the NIH to explain Olson-Kennedy’s actions, since she was funded by the agency.

“We remain concerned that minors lack the ability to fully understand the lifelong outcomes of the interventions studied in this project and provide their consent,” the senators wrote. “Further, taxpayers have the right to know the outcomes of the research they fund, particularly when the intervention studied has life-altering impacts.”

In a phone interview with The Daily Wire this week, Tuberville slammed the NIH for “withholding all the data from the American public about puberty blockers.”

“At the end of the day, they don’t improve mental health of children and they’re trying to prove that it did,” he said. “It’s just another insane idea that the Left has had … they want to create a war over gender and we’re not going to fall for it right now.”

(Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The Alabama Republican argued that Americans deserve to know where every one of their taxpayer dollars goes, warning that gender activists are “trying to hide everything that they’re doing when it comes to gender.”

President Donald Trump has suggested he will be open to protecting children from these irreversible transgender procedures, and Tuberville emphasized to The Daily Wire that Trump has made it very clear to the public that he is against gender ideology and its impacts on children. Tuberville specifically pointed to Trump’s statements supporting the fight to keep men out of women’s sports.

“Totally against it,” Tuberville said of Trump. “He’s gonna have to find some kind of avenue in which to put a stop to all this madness because we’re losing women’s sports, right and left. We’re losing scholarships for women. We’re gonna have young women not getting into the sports at all.”

“It’s just on and on nonsense that continues to be brought to life by the Left,” he remarked, commenting on how the Trump campaign “hammered” gender ideology so effectively in the last few months of the campaign. “I think it had a big difference with a lot of people’s late decision on the election.”

“I’d be 100% for, for banning anything with minors,” the Alabama senator said. “There’s no reason for any parent to have the right to have their kids gender transitioned, before they reach the age of 18 or 19 years old. You’re starting to see a lot of young people that are, whether it’s a lawsuit or whatever, saying, ‘Why did I do this to myself? Why did my parents allow this to happen?'”

Asked if he thinks a bill banning transgender procedures for children could make it through the Senate, Tuberville replied, “Oh, I don’t think it would get 60 votes.”

“I had two votes my first year here on the floor about men and women’s sports and I didn’t get all the Republicans votes. Joe Manchin voted with me, but I didn’t get all the Republican votes. It was heartbreaking to me, just to watch anybody that would vote against that. But again, you know, it was a big part of the Democrat agenda.”

The NIH did not immediately respond to a request for comment.